Dr Vino's wine blog

wine talk that goes down easy

BOOSTED: …awareness!
Young Austrian winemakers have posed scantily clad for a calendar to boost…awareness! Of Austrian wine. Which one is Miss Gru Vee again? Appearing later this year: a calendar of old hag winemakers from the mountains. [Decanter]

CRASHED: shipping container
A forklift lifted 462 cases of wine 20 feet in the air! No, this isn’t the Guinness World Record for machinery; instead, the load fell to the ground destroying the Australian shiraz therein. Although the vintner, Sparky Marquis, is crying over spilled wine, he was also insured. [NYT]

SPIT: infomercialsRJonwine has a detailed account of this past weekend’s conference of wine bloggers in Charlottesville, VA. He decried the preponderance of “paid-sponsor presentations” on the program. Another blogger who is disenchanted with blogging finds the whole event salvaged by hanging out in the wee hours with fellow wine enthusiasts.

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The Times makes it sound as though Sparky’s wines have never been seen on these shores before. And are Ausie Shiraz still selling for $200/bottle? And only one case survived? Conspiracy theories, anyone?

Jeff – I did not attend this year’s WBC so I posted two links about it. If you think the programing was less than “90%” from paid sponsors, please feel free to dispute RJonwine’s portrayal. Note that I also linked to Hardy Wallace’s post and he had a good enough time to make his travel worthwhile, but the good ties for him came only after the official schedule was over. Unfortunately, my family summer schedule has prevented me from attending the event.

Richard- Please see Jeff’s blog since he posted an interesting chart of the recent price history of Velvet Glove–and how there is a lot of supply in shops. (The press release the NYT story was based on was poorly worded, apparently, making it sound as if the wine was entering the US for the first time. Btw, who issues a press release for such an event? The cost basis on the loss must be a third of the retail value and only a third of the wine’s production was lost.)

P.S. I understand that there is a similar Napa/Sonoma calendar for the ladies, with Manfred Krankl, Bill Harlan, Mark Aubert, Tim Mondavi, Thomas Rivers Brown, Fred Schrader, Garen Staglin, David Abreu, Bart Araujo, Luc Morlet, Steve Kistler and Ed Sbragia, but I have not seen a copy.

There was a movement a few years back to do a calendar with Ann Colgin, Helen Turley, Jean Phillips, Merry Edwards and Gina Gallo, among others, but for some reason, it never happened.

Personally, I could go for a Burgundy calendar with all 12 slots occupied by Alix de Montille, Dominique Lafon’s former main squeeze and daughter of the bland and soft-spoken Hubert de Montille. She is one saucy wench!